Communication systems are well known in which persons initiate or receive telephone calls using, for example, wireless or wireline phones, where the calls are routed through a series of routing connections in traditional wired telephone networks and/or wireless networks between the calling and called parties, wherein the call may be routed through different carriers depending on congestion in a given system. In certain instances, it may be important that particular delay-sensitive calls be connected as quickly as possible, for example, such as 911 emergency calls, Wireless Priority Service calls, emergency preparedness/Government Emergency Telephone Service (GETS) calls, defense network calls (Multi-Level Precedence and Preemption), etc. Certain conventional network routing technology may allow an after-the-fact determination of the ability to route a call or session between individual network elements on a hop-by-hop basis. For instance, in packet-switched IP networks, RTCP (Real Time Control Protocol) may provide information on certain packets in a call, such as interval jitter, number of packets sent or lost, and packet path delay. Dynamic non-hierarchical routing (DNHR) uses statistical predictability of aggregated telephone traffic and the fact that switches and links are usually available to select two-hop paths when a given shortest one-hop path is blocked. However, the current routing technologies do not provide the ability to allow call control elements to look at the network from an end to end perspective. Thus, there remains a need for improved systems and methods by which emergency and other high priority calls can be routed in real time using the telephone network routing paths with the shortest measured delay as seen by the network routing elements themselves.